Renewal

Been kind of slacking in the art department lately – working on bits and pieces of various stuff has been no problem, but actually finishing anything… yeah. I haven’t done anything traditional in a while, either. Forgot how much i love pen drawings.

So, for the Illustration Friday theme of ‘Renewal’ – a young woman ‘renewing’ herself by breaking the ties which have been holding her to a life she doesn’t like.

I sort-of tried to tie her into the Star card in the tarot, too, but almost everything i did along that line made her look worse instead of better… so i gave up pretty quick. It could still work as a Star card, i guess; the overall theme of freedom, hope, and inspiration is still there.

Semi-random tangent: i have been ridiculously obsessed with tarot art lately. I love seeing all the ways different artists have of interpreting the symbolism of the cards; i actually get really disappointed when i see a deck which has more to do with what the artist felt like doing than what the card normally symbolises. Okay, so tarot started out as, and in some countries still is, primarily just a card game; and while i don’t know the actual game rules i imagine the symbolism is pretty irrelevant – so it’s not like a deck which doesn’t join with the traditional symbolism is automatically useless or pointless.

Still, coming across such a deck while looking at more symbolic decks is like coming across a landscape at a portrait exhibit. There’s all these wonderful ways of depicting people; full bodies and faces and other body parts, active and passive, realistic and impressionistic and fauvist and abstract, and then, bam, there’s a sunset over a valley.

And it could be the most beautiful landscape in the world, there’s still going to be a what-the-hell-is-that-doing-here moment. Does it look like a person if you squint and tip your head sideways? Is it some sort of highbrow non-figurative portrait, where the colours represent the person’s aura and the environment represents eir birthplace and the buildings represent eir accomplishments? Is it just a really long-distance portrait and if you just look closely, you’ll see a tiny figure waving from the horizon?

completely random other stuff

A refillable colour-mixing spray paint can! Like one of those four-colour click-pens, except with the ability to mix the ink colour. Not sure i’d ever use one for spray-painting purposes, but man, i would love to have an industrial-sized paint tube like this. Hang it on the wall over my palette, dial up a colour, squirt out.

Awesome concept motorcycles, which, still being concepts instead of real bikes, are better for sci-fi artists to drool over than for anyone to actually ride.